Windows 8

[kenja]

Anyone using Windows 8 yet?

My excellent Vista laptop is giving problems and I've just ordered a new one which - of course - comes packaged with Windows 8. It hasn't arrived yet but I'm already getting cold feet and am concerned nothing I use will work on it. I'm already researching how to put Win XP / or Vista / or 7 on it instead.

Any advance advice would be welcome

Ken

[JohnG]

Hi Ken,

It seems a new version of Windows 8 is close on the horizon, Windows 8.1, and this is supposed to address the many complaints that people have made about 8 straight. One thing, for example, is the return of the start button! IMO Win 8 is fine for the tablet environment, but I can't see that working very well for the standard desk top, or even laptop environment. I can't imagine typing a tutorial and editing screen snapshots via a touch screen.

My own solution was to buy a second hand XP based, refurbished laptop (with a warranty (you won't get a long one)) from a reputable company, via ebay, at a significantly reduced price over a new one. No, not all shiny and new, but I then spent a bit more on a docking station into which I put a second hard drive (swappable with the CD/DVD drive).

As a general rule I never buy into a new operating system until they've cleared out the major bugs. With XP I waited until after SP2 came out. It's especially important with things like sound cards, because it often takes up to a year before the manufacturers catch up and iron out bugs in their drivers. Sometimes they never bring out an upgrade which means the good sound card or module is rendered instantly obsolete.

I've stuck with XP for the time being. It's rock solid and there's loads of good MIDI kit compatible with it and XP drivers for that kit.

Of course if you're into huge sound libraries, many gigabytes large, with streaming audio direct from hard disk, then the ability to support 8 or even 16 gigabytes of memory is a godsend. But I'm guessing most of us here don't need that. Sometimes I remind myself that I was doing MIDI perfectly adequately on an Atari 520 ST. Audio needs a little more grunt but a decent XP machine with say a core 2 duo running at 2 or 2.2 GHz with 3 meg of RAM is perfectly adequate for most things we need to do, creating or playing music.

Just my 2d worth, as usual.
Regards,
JohnG.